Snowy capped mountains

Snowy capped mountains. Demo for environment design class. Highly influenced by Shin Hanga style Japanese woodcut prints from the 20th century.

The intent is to avoid painting brush strokes as much as possible. Select shapes by using the lasso tool to draw with and fill them with color and gradients.

Misty Treeline

5"x7" watercolor on paper

A Tree

5"x7" watercolor on paper

Appleberry Dr Sunset

5"x7" watercolor on paper

Factory and the Evening Sky

Watercolors on paper.

Lucas Valley Preserve Hills

watercolor on paper

Creek in the Deep Woods Study

More Peaks

Peaks

Snowy Mountain

Colorful Falls

A little study for color practice. Done almost exclusively with the Dry Media brush set that comes with Photoshop.

Tiemens Workshop

We just spent the weekend in Mendocino at a watercolor/gouache workshop with Erik Tiemens. One of the best classes I've been to. It really took me outside my comfort zone with color, and I was inspired by learning the classic pre-photography approach of doing several sketches on location and bringing them back to the studio to do a finish from.

This piece was done by experimenting with mixing gouache and watercolor by toning the board with very intense colors: neon green, yellow, and bright red. Then painting washes of more somber, realistic colors on top. This allowed the bright color underneath to "sparkle" through in some areas creating color combinations and harmonies I'd never think of doing on my own.
We were encouraged to try different papers like this warm gray Canson paper:
This final piece I did was done from location studies and memory and a bit of invention. Erik put some magic touches at the end that really added drama and pulled the composition together. I learned a lot.

Europe...the rest of the story

Some quick watercolor paintings I did in London and Rome a while back.
Trinity Square in London


View from the Spanish Steps, Rome

Roman ruins

Ferremanto plaza

How the West was Lost

This one (in 3 parts) has a painful history. Maybe someday when the trauma has worn off I'll tell the tale.

Castle

A quick little castle painting. Tried to focus on atmosphere and lighting.

Castle ruins

Ink splats

I've been playing around with creating ink splats to make Photoshop brushes a lot lately. I must have made a dozen pages worth of these:


This quick sketch was painted in Photoshop entirely using ink splat brushes:

Tunnel to San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome, Italy

Last year when we visited Rome our hotel was across the street from this archway, which led to the church that holds Michelangelo's Moses sculpture. Amazing.

For practice I did a quick digital sketch from a photo I took of it.

Colors!

I'm way behind the curve here, but I finally got Colors for my DS. What a great program! It's like the ultimate paint sketching kit the size of a small sketchbook.

Here was my first rather abstract attempt. This was in front of the Oakland airport.

Looking out the window of the plane I sketched the fields of some mid-Western state.

This was done at my wife's Aunt's house backyard.

More to come later, I'm sure.

Anything so lovely as a tree

Our baby girl loves trees. So do I because they are easier to draw than people. Who cares how many limbs a tree has? But put an extra limb or two on a person...

This was a watercolor sketch done on location in Golden Gate park. I couldn't resist a little digital enhancement.